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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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Why are we claiming she’s a “proven expert”? I see nothing remarkable in her background. She went to a shitty college. And she did the thing that is a strong indicator of incompetence - filed a sex discrimination lawsuit.

Note: had to look up Wikipedia she went to a bad college. Yep 83% acceptance rate. 2 strong strikes against her.

Her Twitter is somewhat trans-coded, with the mask, pronouns, and hair, which is worth at least one strong strike for her expertise, and kind of cancels out the attention seeking lawsuit, which would then be par for course if she's trans. (Though, as far I can tell, she's not actually trans.)

Generally, she's well-regarded. tptacek, years ago, has referenced her as credible on HN; she's not a no-name who has been elevated from obscurity for political purposes.

Being trans should radically increase your estimation of her security expertise.

one strong strike for her expertise

Sorry, I misunderstood "strike" to be a negative, as in baseball.

One of my hot takes that is very obviously true (to me, at least) and angers everyone is that trans women are superior programmers (and pentesters) to cis men, cis women, and trans men.

Is that a byproduct of being trans, or is that sort of mind just more likely to become trans?

Latter. Tech savants and trans people are both disproportionately neurodivergent.

Yeah - there was a famous Facebook post by Yudkowsky where he said that he thought 20% of the biological males in his social circle were actually trans, although not all of them had realised yet. Yud isn't an idiot, so I assume that there is indeed a certain level of spergery where 20% of the biological males would troon out with sufficient encouragement.

For the avoidance of doubt, I do not support providing this encouragement. At the time, Yudkowsky appeared to.